The Medication Safety Programme aims to greatly reduce the number of New Zealanders harmed each year by medication errors in our hospitals, general practices, aged care facilities and across the entire health and disability sector.

Healthcare associated infection is one of the most frequent adverse events in health care worldwide. Up to 10 percent of patients admitted to modern hospitals in the developed world acquire one or more infections.

The Commission is increasing its focus on primary care and community services, aged residential care and disability services. The Primary Care programme aims to increase quality improvement capability in these areas.

Health Quality and Safety Indicators are a set of measures of all aspects of quality for the whole New Zealand health system. The Commission will use them to track progress in the health and disability sector over time and compare ourselves with other countries.

The Commission is required under legislation to develop and publish regularly a set of indicators to drive improvement of the quality and safety of New Zealand’s health and disability support services.

These indicators have now been developed and were launched on our website this week. This is the first time the Commission has published these indicators.

Over time we expect that the indicator set will change, as definitions for existing indicators are refined, new indicators are added and others are ‘retired‘ as they become less relevant.